Amazon is fighting back against the growing dominance of Netflix by purchasing British movie rental company Lovefilm. Amazon has owned a significant stake in the company since 2008, when Lovefilm bought Amazon’s DVD service, but today’s news brings the company entirely under Amazon control.
Lovefilm, which offers DVD rental through …
Streaming music service Spotify has finally landed its first US deal, with All Things Digital reporting that Sony has signed on to the service that offers users a set number of hours for free streaming music per month. The service, which has been becoming increasingly popular in Europe over the last few years, has found American labels …
This week, city council members from Huntington Beach, Calif. considered requiring their local police to post mug shots of all DUI offenders on Facebook. For a society that has moved on from physical punishment in public, our Scarlet Letter complex is still frighteningly unwavering.
(More on Techland: AMBER Alerts Now Dispatched Via …
This week’s Technologizer column on TIME.com is about e-books–and how e-reading software for computers and smartphones lets you enjoy them without splurging on a Kindle, Nook, or other piece of specialized hardware. Writing it got me thinking about a fact I’d forgotten about: I started reading e-books back in the mid-1990s, before …
While most web companies stare drooling at framed photos of the iPhone on office walls, a few pay attention to the rest of the population. Today, Facebook is one of those companies.
(More on Techland: 5 Tips For A Savvier Facebook Profile)
Wednesday, Facebook announced a new mobile app for regular, old feature phones – no …
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence. Apple COO Tim Cook is taking over in Jobs’ absence. This has happened twice before, and Apple’s been no worse for wear.
The reality is that Steve Jobs won’t be at Apple forever. Whether he never comes back from this current leave of absence or he ends up retiring one day, the …
To everyone worried that Netflix is spending too much money on bandwidth for Netflix Instant, calm down: Turns out that they spend 20 times more on postage for their DVDs.
It costs the company $1 to mail each DVD, compared with 5 cents per streamed movie (on average), but that price difference is one of the few reasons that studios …
They’ve taken over your iPhone and your free time, and now Rovio’s Angry Birds may be about to take over your television, as well. According to Rovio CEO Mikael Hed, the popular game is being adapted into an animated series that could appear on television.
That last part isn’t necessarily set in stone; Hed says that it’s undecided …
The potential of the iPad has finally been fulfilled with the news that Playboy will be getting its own App, allowing access to the entire back catalog of the iconic girlie mag, uncensored. Quite how this fits with Apple’s notorious censorship of content in other apps remains to be seen – beyond the obvious “Playboy is a really big …
There’s a lot of music online–more than most people have time to keep up with. That’s why you’ve got us. Every week, we’ll point you toward three excellent new downloads or videos from chart-topping stars, cult favorites and unknown geniuses.
1. Iron & Wine’s new album Kiss Each Other Clean comes out next week, but if you can’t wait …
According to a study by Kaplan Test Prep, the company that provides tutoring and study services for all the major college and grad school entrance exams, about two-thirds of American teens aren’t afraid to friend their parents on Facebook. (Maybe it’s just teens who don’t mind being so open: I’m still terrified to friend my …
For those who felt that Kickstarter – the crowd-sourcing investment site that allows artists to own their own work – was little more than a vanity press for the digital age, meet Matthew Lessner. His new movie, The Woods is headed to Sundance, and he literally couldn’t have done it without the site.
After funding a month’s worth of …
